MEXICO CITY — An international panel of experts brought to Mexico to investigate the haunting disappearance of 43 students that ignited a global outcry say they cannot solve the case because of a sustained campaign of harassment, stonewalling and intimidation against them.
The investigators say they have endured carefully orchestrated attacks in the Mexican news media, a refusal by the government to turn over documents or grant interviews with essential figures, and even a retaliatory criminal investigation into one of the officials who appointed them.
For some, the inevitable conclusion is that the government simply does not want the experts to solve the case.

“Iran will cheat … that’s the sense you get when reading” the terms of the nuclear agreement, he said, adding Iran is “not a nation state, but a revolutionary cause intent on mayhem.”
Mr. Mattis suggested Congress create an oversight committee, consisting of members from the intelligence, foreign affairs and armed services panels, to ensure Iran continues to comply with the deal. He also suggested Washington bolster its ties with regional intelligence agencies, like those in Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, to ensure American officials are fully informed on Iran’s nuclear activities.
While it remains to be seen if the White House will adhere to Mr. Mattis’s recommendations, the retired general was adamant that he did not want to be the one who would make that decision.
Mr. Mattis, revered in military circles, has reportedly been suggested as a potential GOP presidential candidate. The purported grassroots effort to get Mr. Mattis on the Republican ticket has placed the retired general into the political arena.
But on Friday, Mr. Mattis seemed to put those presidential rumors to rest, telling the audience, “I have not given any thought to it.”
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MEXICO CITY — An international panel of experts brought to Mexico to investigate the haunting disappearance of 43 students that ignited a global outcry say they cannot solve the case because of a sustained campaign of harassment, stonewalling and intimidation against them.The investigators say they have endured carefully orchestrated attacks in the Mexican news media, a refusal by the government to turn over documents or grant interviews with essential figures, and even a retaliatory criminal investigation into one of the officials who appointed them.For some, the inevitable conclusion is that the government simply does not want the experts to solve the case.

“Iran will cheat … that’s the sense you get when reading” the terms of the nuclear agreement, he said, adding Iran is “not a nation state, but a revolutionary cause intent on mayhem.”Mr. Mattis suggested Congress create an oversight committee, consisting of members from the intelligence, foreign affairs and armed services panels, to ensure Iran continues to comply with the deal. He also suggested Washington bolster its ties with regional intelligence agencies, like those in Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, to ensure American officials are fully informed on Iran’s nuclear activities.While it remains to be seen if the White House will adhere to Mr. Mattis’s recommendations, the retired general was adamant that he did not want to be the one who would make that decision.Mr. Mattis, revered in military circles, has reportedly been suggested as a potential GOP presidential candidate. The purported grassroots effort to get Mr. Mattis on the Republican ticket has placed the retired general into the political arena.But on Friday, Mr. Mattis seemed to put those presidential rumors to rest, telling the audience, “I have not given any thought to it.”-

NEWS: The World and Security Review: http://newslinksandbundles.blogspot.com/ The main news stories from the major sources; selected, compiled, and occasionally commented on by Mike Nova

FBI informants acted as ‘honeypots’ to trap a 21-year-old man, posing as love interests to glean information, audio obtained by the Intercept reveals. One woman lured him into making a false claim that he’d tried to go to Syria to fight with Islamic State.

Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley (R-IA) said Friday that he believed that the FBI could leak the results of its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server if “political interference” gets in the way of a prosecution.”Is there going to be political interference? If there’s enough evidence to prosecute, will there be political interference?” Grassley said among reporters during a breakfast at the Des Moines A.M. Rotary club, according to the Des Moines Register. “And if there’s political interference, then I assume that somebody in the FBI is going to leak these reports and it’s either going to have an effect politically or it’s going to lead to prosecution if there’s enough evidence.”

Gen. Joseph F. Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, paid a visit on Friday to a tiny artillery outpost in Iraq, presenting Purple Hearts to four service members wounded in a recent rocket attack that also killed an American Marine.During a stop in Iraqi Kurdistan at the end of a three-day visit to Iraq, Dunford slipped away by helicopter to Fire Base Bell, a tiny post adjacent to a larger Iraqi base southeast of Mosul. Accompanied by only a handful of aides, Dunford spent about 90 minutes with the approximately 200 Marines at the isolated facility, close to the front lines with the Islamic State.Speaking to reporters later in the day, Dunford said he distributed the awards at the very gun position where Staff Sgt. Louis Cardin, a member of the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, was killed last month in a militant rocket attack.

Fri Apr 22, 2016 11:9AMSaudi ties with the US have changed forever and would not return to what it was before even under a new president, the kingdom’s former intelligence chief Prince Turki al-Faisal says.”There is going to have to be, a recalibration of our relationship with America — how far we can go with our dependence on America. How much can we rely on steadfastness from American leadership. What is it that makes for our joint benefits to come together,” he told CNN.”And I don’t think that we should expect any new president in America to go back to, as I said, the yesteryear days when things were different,” Faisal added.Faisal further criticized recent remarks by US Senator Richard Blumenthal that low oil prices and high domestic output lessened Washington’s dependence on the kingdom.Saudis “no longer have us in an energy straitjacket,” Blumenthal had told The New York Times.Faisal said the remarks by the prominent senator were an insult to the Saudi monarchy.

Staunton, April 23 – In the last few weeks, a large number of commentators have suggested that the Putin regime will be challenged or even overthrown. Many may simply be engaging in wishful thinking; but they highlight an important development: ever more Russians now recognize that the Putin regime is not eternal and could end sooner than anyone imagines. That does not mean they are right: Vladimir Putin even more than his Chinese comrades is quite prepared to engage in what used to be called “big blood” to maintain himself in power; and he is even more prepared to engage in risky foreign policy actions to shore up his increasingly shaky position with the Russian population. Indeed, those two possibilities may be the most important reason for paying attention to those who argue that his regime is coming to an end because the way that happens and its immediate aftermath may be extremely dangerous not only for Russia and Russians but for the international community.

The FBI is working hard to keep you unsafeTechCrunchHow did the FBI hack into the Tor network last February? They won't say, but it seems extremely likely that they used a zero-day in the Tor Browser, which runs on the same fundamental codebase as Firefox … which is used by hundreds of millions of ...

The Senate's leading Republican voices on national security are assembling an indictment of Donald Trump's worldview by soliciting rebuttals from U.S. military leaders that challenge the accuracy and legality of the GOP presidential front-runner's most provocative foreign policy positions.

On April 11, CBS’s “60 Minutes” led with an important segment about the tragedy of 9/11 and how a 28-page chapter of a congressional investigation has been withheld from the American people for almost 13 years.

This was not a cover-up. It was the result of aggressive deception. Your government has purposely used deceit to withhold the truth.

The reason for deceit: to protect the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia from its complicity in the murder of 2,977 Americans. On April 15, The New York Times reported: “Saudi Arabia has told the Obama administration and members of Congress that it will sell off hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of American assets held by the kingdom if Congress passes a bill that would allow the Saudi government to be held responsible for any role in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.”

If that is not sufficient to get your blood boiling, read on: “The Obama administration has lobbied Congress to block the bill’s passage …” Of the many unanswered questions of 9/11, the most significant, I believe, is whether the 19 hijackers operated alone or were aided by a support network. The official position of the U.S. government is that they acted alone. Like myself, the lead investigators of 9/11 find it implausible that these 19 poorly-educated Arab men — most unable to speak English and with no prior experience in the U.S. — could have conducted such a complex plot without assistance from within our country.

The forms of aggressive deceit have been multiple. A few are illustrative:

The 28 pages, which have been reported to disclose the sources of funding for the attack, have been under review for purposes of declassification for three years — three times the amount of time required for the congressional inquiry to research, analyze and issue an 838-page report.

The 28 pages are the most iconic, but not the only, evidence to be withheld from the report of the congressional inquiry. The report is pocked by hundreds of specific redactions.

Investigations at locales where the hijackers lived and plotted prior to the attacks also have been classified. One of those involves Mohamed Atta, the leader of the hijackers, and two of his henchmen who are alleged to have collaborated with a prominent Saudi family who lived in Sarasota for six years before abruptly departing for Saudi Arabia two weeks before 9/11.

The FBI publicly described its Sarasota investigation as complete and said it found no connection between the hijackers and the family. Later, responding to a Freedom of Information lawsuit, the FBI released an investigative report that said the family had “many connections” to individuals tied to the terrorist attacks. The FBI now claims the agent who prepared the report was incompetent, yet refuses to make public the findings upon which that 20-year career agent was thrown under the bus. Some now say, why worry about events that will soon be 15 years old? There are at least three reasons to continue demanding full transparency:

• Justice: The legislation referred to in The New York Times article is designed to modernize the procedures under which Americans can seek justice in an American court for murder or lesser crimes inflicted on U.S. soil by foreign terrorists. Without this, justice to the families of the victims is denied.

• National security: The Saudis blatant attempts to avoid liability as co-conspirators in the crime of 9/11, and the U.S. government’s acquiescence by refusing to release information (and opposition to reforming laws that would hold collaborators in murder to account) has been a clear signal to the Kingdom that it is immune from U.S. sanctions. With that impunity, it continues to finance terrorists and fund mosques and schools used to indoctrinate the next generation of terrorists in intolerance and jihad.

• Democracy: The American government is founded on the consent of the governed. To give that consent, the people must know what the government is doing in its name. Distrust in government is reflected in the speeches of today’s presidential candidates. The public’s sometimes angry response is fueled by a sense of betrayal and deceit.

Bob Graham is a former governor of Florida and U.S. Senator and was a co-chairman of the 2002 congressional inquiry into the 9/11 attacks.

Independent investigators are expected to report that the official version of the disappearance and likely killings of 43 students isn’t true, and that government obstructions prevented the team from verifying what happened.

Looking out from the Syrian capital these days, one can understand why President Bashar Assad would be in no hurry to make concessions at peace talks in Geneva, let alone consider stepping down as the opposition demands.

With the publication of Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America,[2] the claims of many authors that Soviet spies hadn’t really existed, or, if they had it didn’t really matter, were debunked with irrefutable evidence. What more was left to say? M. Stanton Evans and Herbert Romerstein hint at the answer, quoting Whittaker Chambers: “The power to influence policy has always been the purpose of Communist Party’s infiltration. It was much more dangerous … and more difficult to prove than espionage.” (p. 8) While Chambers did not have access to material that supported his judgment, Evans and Romerstein have found documents in the heretofore unexamined papers of former secretary of state Edward Stettinius that, they argue, do just that. Stalin’s Secret Agents states their case.

A principal focus of Stalin’s Secret Agents is on the extraordinary influence exerted by Alger Hiss at the Yalta Conference in February 194S. Roosevelt’s foreign policy advisor, Stettinius, had been secretary of state for only two months and often allowed Hiss to speak for him in the presence of the principals. The authors provide examples. One instance involved China policy, a topic Hiss later claimed he didn’t address. Stettinius’ diary—the page is reproduced in the book—shows that Hiss had indeed raised the question, encouraging “support for an agreement between the Comintern” and the anticommunist Chiang Kai-shek government. The official State Department record omitted the exchange. (pp. 43-44)

The authors discuss many other examples of known communist agents, for example Harry Dexter White and Lauchlin Currie, working to influence US policies. In one case, they describe a report written by OSS officer, Linn Farish—named as a Soviet agent in the VENONA decrypts—that praised Tito and compared the Chinese communist movement to the “American revolution.” Somehow the document found its way from OSS files to the White House and was shown to Stalin. (pp. 163-64)

Evans and Romerstein do not neglect espionage performed by Americans serving as Soviet agents. One example involved Duncan Lee, the OSS officer who supplied a list of suspected communists to the Soviets through Soviet agent Elizabeth Bentley. The list, heavily redacted in the VENONA decrypts, is reproduced in full for the first time in this book.

Will Stalin’s Secret Agents put to rest the view that Hiss and the other agents mentioned really acted in the best interests of the United States? Probably not. The actions of “agents of influence” will likely be interpreted by some as simply aiding an ally in the war. Evans and Romerstein have made that judgment much more difficult to support.

[1] Peake, Hayden B. in The Intelligencer: Journal of U. S. Intelligence Studies (20, 2, Fall/Winter, 2013, pp. 130-131). Hayden Peake is the Curator of the CIA’s Historical Intelligence Collection. He has served in the Directorate of Science and Technology and the Directorate of Operations. Most of these reviews appeared in recent unclassified editions of CIA’s Studies in Intelligence. These and many other reviews and articles may be found online at www.cia.gov.

According to open media sources, over the past five years, five representatives of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria and the Caucasus Emirate have been killed in Turkey. All five were actively involved in the ongoing armed conflict in the North Caucasus (Kavkazsky Uzel, April 15). After one recent such assassination, the Turkish authorities detained an ethnic Chechen from Georgia’s Pankisi, Temur Makhauri. The Turkish authorities suspected Makhauri of ties to Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) and involvement in the assassination of a high-profile representative of the Caucasus Emirate in Turkey, Ali Osaev, who was killed on February 26, 2009 (Lenta.ru, February 19, 2014).

The Turkish security services arrested two Russians, 52-year-old Yuri Anisimov and 55-year-old Aleksandr Smirnov, in Istanbul. The authorities suspect the two arrested Russian men of killing a Chechen, Abdulvakhid Edilgeriev, in Turkey, on November 1, 2015. Edilgeriev was mostly known for his role as the administrator of the website of the North Caucasian militants, Kavkazcenter. Edilgeriev was married to Movladi Udugov’s niece, which was the primary reason for the widespread media coverage of his killing in Turkey. The authorities arrested the suspects on April 8, but the media reported their arrest only five days later, which was probably not an accident. Against the backdrop of the strained relations between Russia and Turkey, the Turkish security services most likely organized the leak of information about the arrest (Informnapalm.org, April 13).

Russian authorities quickly responded to the arrests in Turkey. According to the Russian side, Aleksandr Smirnov is actually Valid Lurakhmaev, who is not a spy but a Chechen criminal wanted by the Russian authorities in connection to a series of murders. The newspaper Novaya Gazetareported that Lurakhmaev had ties to high-profile officials in Russia (Novaya Gazeta, July 9, 2012). Thus, Russia immediately sought to portray Lurakhmaev as an ordinary criminal rather than a possible spy. At the same time, the Russian consul general in Istanbul showed an unusually high interest in the suspects, having met them the same day the Turkish authorities made their arrest public. Moreover, the Russian consul general was present at the preliminary court hearing the day after he visited them, and reported that the suspects pleaded not guilty and refused to answer the investigators’ questions (RIA Novosti, April 15). Meanwhile, Turkish media are convinced that the suspects have provided evidence of their spying activities to the Turkish authorities (Hurriyet Daily News, April 13).

Chechen immigrants do not feel safe in Turkey. The Russian security services closely watch local activists who represent the North Caucasus armed Islamic underground movement in Turkey. Many militants who fought in Chechnya and went for medical treatment in Turkey often remain in the country. The wives and relatives of former militants, the former leadership of Ichkeria, representatives of the Caucasus Emirate, and supporters of the virtual caliphate all ended up in Turkey. Today’s Chechen community in Turkey is made up of several thousand people who are divided into multiple factions that do not cooperate but compete with each other. A large group also exists of Chechen businessmen who engage in legitimate business activities but who distance themselves from the political refugees in Turkey. The Russian security services are interested in the processes going on inside the Chechen diaspora in Turkey. Hence, more assassinations and arrests of killers are likely to follow.

The Russian security services have killed Chechens not only in Turkey. For example, Zelimkhan Yandarbiev was killed in Qatar’s capital Doha in 2004 (Newsru.com, February 13, 2004). The police in Qatar quickly arrested the perpetrators—two officers of the Russian military’s Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU), Anatoly Yablochkov, and Vasily Pugachev. Moscow managed to convince Qatar to hand over the suspects to Russia. Then–Russian defense minister Sergei Ivanov personally met them on a red carpet at the airport, and they were immediately set free (Onkavkaz.com, April 14).

Another notorious murder of a Chechen abroad and outside Turkey took place in Austria. In January 2009, a former bodyguard of Ramzan Kadyrov, Umar Israpilov, was killed in broad daylight in Vienna (Gazeta.ru, April 26, 2010). Kadyrov’s rival Sulim Yamadaev was killed in Dubai in March 2009 (Lenta.ru, January 2012). Former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko, who was closely connected to the Chechen issue and received political asylum in the United Kingdom, died of a lethal dose of radioactive polonium-210, in London, on November 22, 2006 (Vedomosti.ru, January 21, 2016).

Unlike the notorious killings in Qatar, Russian security services almost always use ethnic Chechens to carry out the assassinations of other Chechens, while Russian diplomats have practically always provided support to the killers (Rfi.fr, May 19, 2011). The middlemen between the killers and the Russian government are usually ethnic Chechens employed at Russian embassies. Russians use the middlemen to establish trust among members of the local Chechen diasporas. The Russians usually sacrifice the killers, while the Chechen middlemen are evacuated to Russia.

Moscow regards the existence of a Chechen diaspora abroad as a threat and wants to neutralize it or, at least make it apolitical. However, the trend is that the Chechen diaspora, especially that part of it connected to the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, is becoming increasingly active in politics, which attracts Russian attention. This means that there will likely be new victims among Chechens who live abroad.

The United States military and government in general must effectively harness the power of social media. Without this critical first step, the U.S. will continue to fall behind its foes in producing a constructive narrative.

Subjects

An account of Newcomb Mott, a twenty-seven-year-old textbook salesman from Sheffield, Massachusetts, who crossed into the USSR at remote Boris Gleb, a Soviet salient on the Norwegian border, in September 1965, and was arrested by the KGB. The author, an award-winning book and film writer with an interest in foreign affairs, describes the trial and conviction in Murmansk and the subsequent Soviet announcement that Mott had slashed his throat aboard a train en route to a prison work camp to serve an eighteen-month sentence for violating the Soviet border.

Why Americans Want a Military General in the White HouseTIMEWhat is it about military leaders that has led so many voters to champion them for the Presidency? After all, it's not like the nation has emerged victorious from its recent wars. But it actually may have more to do with the personal qualities ...

A key Republican lawmaker on foreign policy says the U.S.-backed cease-fire in Syria is "effectively dead" and that the time has come for serious debate on whatever "plan B" the Obama administration has for responding to the nation's 6-year-old civil war.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he received assurances of military coordination in a trip to Moscow that would help Israel stop the transfer of weapons through Syria to its Iranian-backed Hezbollah enemy in Lebanon.

Saudis To Kerry: We Created ISIS… And CIA KnewAntiwar.com (blog)It was US intervention in the Middle East, say the Saudis, that led us to create first al-Qaeda and then ISIS. The US attack on Iraq tipped the balance in the region in favor of Iran and counter-measures needed to be taken. This is nothing new. The CIA...and more »

'Indian-origin ex-CIA officer faces extradition from Portugal'Business Standard"De Sousa's extradition and potential imprisonment would be an astonishing turn of events for a case that raises major questions about how much diplomatic protection CIA case officers abroad possess when carrying out operations sanctioned by their ...

The Justice Department on Thursday revealed that a well-known Islamic State operative instructed a Boston-area man to kill Pamela Geller, the organizer of a controversial Muhammad cartoon contest in Texas last year.

Will the FBI say how it pierced terrorist iPhone?Bloomberg Government (blog)The FBI recently used gray-hat hackers to unlock the San Bernardino terrorist's iPhone, according to the Washington Post's Ellen Nakashima. The agency bought an exploit that prevents the iPhone from wiping out stored data after 10 incorrect passcode ...

Thanks to weak American counterintelligence and limited public awareness, the risk to Beijing is low while the rewards can be high.

Chinese espionage against the United States is in the news again. Recently in this column I explained the sensational case of Edward Lin, the Taiwanese immigrant turned U.S. Navy officer who stands accused of committing espionage against his adopted homeland. This story raises many troubling questions about the dismal state of security in our navy, which seems unable to keep secrets anymore.

Although the navy is staying tight-lipped about Lieutenant Commander Lin, it’s already evident that the damage he perpetrated—thanks to his high-level access to some of the navy’s best-guarded secrets—is daunting. Damning, too, is the news that Mr. Lin was arrested while boarding a flight bound for China, the beneficiary of his alleged betrayal. No wonder top admirals want to keep as much of his impending trial classified as possible, to prevent public discussion of how much damage this traitor wrought on our national security.

Yet this is no isolated incident. In the two weeks since the Lin story broke, we have still more cases of Chinese immigrants accused of spying against their adopted country on behalf of their ancestral one. Szuhsiung “Allen” Ho, a Chinese immigrant and naturalized American, faces a raft of charges for running an espionage ring aimed at stealing nuclear secrets for Beijing. According to the Federal indictment, at the direction of a Chinese state-owned nuclear power company Mr. Ho recruited a half-dozen engineers to get nuclear secrets that Beijing wanted but could not obtain legally from the United States.

James B. Comey Jr., the F.B.I. director, spoke in London on Thursday about breaking into the San Bernadino shooter’s iPhone, disclosing that bureau chiefs paid “a lot” to bypass the phone’s encryption.

Iran attempted to launch a satellite into orbit using one of its Simorgh intercontinental ballistic missiles on Tuesday but failed. According to Western intelligence sources that monitored the launch, the missile carrying the satellite failed to reach the atmosphere, fell to earth and crashed.DEBKAfile's military sources point out that the Iranians attempted the launch the day before US President Barack Obama arrived in Riyadh for talks with Saudi King Salman and the other leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council member states. Tehran's goal was to overshadow Obama's visit, but it failed.

It is unusual for a sitting U.S. president to intervene directly in an election in a foreign country, and maybe risky. But then, there is nothing "usual" about Britain's EU referendum, scheduled for June 23.